Goofs

We see the chandelier in the foyer of Miss Trunchbull's house fall to the floor in one shot while Miss Trunchbull is chasing our two heroes, but minutes later, it's hung up again.

In the scene where the newt jumps on Miss Trunchbull, you can see the math problems are perfectly written on the chalkboard before Miss Trunchbull backs into the board. When she moves forward, two of the problems are smudged and one is mostly erased. In the next shot, all of the problems are intact again.

When Mr. Wormwood takes his kids to the car dealership he states that the junker in the workshop has 120,000 miles on the clock. When they begin turning the dial back the first shot (before they actually adjust it) the odometer (incorrectly referred to as a speedometer) reads around 80,000 miles.

At the beginning of the scene Harry comes home and asks Mike to get a pen and paper to take down his profits for the day. Before they get to the table there is a full shot of the table and no one is sitting at it. A different angle shows Matilda is sitting at the end of the table which was empty a second earlier.

On Matilda's first day of school, when the Trunchbull comes outside, Matilda runs to hide in a gap in the walls where she meets Lavender and Hortensia. After she has finished talking to them and the Trunchbull says "fresh meat", Matilda is standing in her original position in the schoolyard so the Trunchbull brushes her aside. She would not have had time to move to that position.

When Mr. Wormwood is telling Mikey and Matilda to turn the miles back on the car, he tells them to watch the speedometer. The odometer tracks the miles, not the speedometer.

When Matilda enters the Ritz and Mrs. Wormwood starts pulling at Mr. Wormwood's hat, a few Eiffel towers can be seen, as decorations on the tables. All of these Eiffel towers have the Dutch flag on them, with horizontal stripes, rather than clear vertical stripes.

Matilda's parents let Miss Honey legally adopt Matilda by signing the adoption papers. In reality it is not as simple as that. For Matilda to be properly adopted the Wormwoods would have to sign a lot of paper work which would then go through the courts. This would take time so technically Miss Honey would be adopting Matilda illegally.

Near the end of the film, Matilda tells Miss Honey about the speed of a mouse's beating heart, which supposedly is fast enough to sound like humming. The speed of 650 beats per minute is one possible value for a mouse heart rate, but equals a frequency of about 11 Hz which is below the range of human hearing.

When Mr. Wormwood turns off the TV per Miss Honey's orders when she visits, his wife Mrs. Wormwood whom mentions a boxer by the name of "Velasquez", she pronounces it as "vel-AS-kwez". The last name is Spanish and should be pronounced "vel-AS-kez", as Spanish phonetics do not use the "kw" sound when for "qu" in names, words, etc.

At one point in the film, Miss Trunchbull eats one of the candies without removing the wrapper. However, this is not technically a mistake because some people do eat their candy with the wrapper still on and that trait about Miss Trunchbull only added to her character. (In the original VHS, there is more than one reference to her eating the candy without removing the wrapper.)

While Matilda intimidates the Trunchbull with her magic powers at her house, she gets the Trunchbull's mantle clock to chime 9, 10, and 12, but not 11. However, it is quite likely that Matilda decided to skip 11 and head straight for 12.

The two FBI agents quote different times for when the Wormwoods leave their house. In reality, they would've synchronized their watches before setting off on their investigation. This is clearly intentional, as a later scene establishes that these are two lousy cops who are not the greatest at their jobs: Matilda witnesses them searching the Wormwoods' garage without a warrant, and they acknowledge that this is illegal to do before she confronts them and before they continue their search.

When Miss Trunchbull puts Matilda in the Chokey, she bumps into one of the nails sticking through the door and it shakes like it's rubber.

When Matilda levitates the water pitcher to show Miss Honey her powers, the shadow of the water pitcher is still where it should be if it was sitting on the tabletop.

When Zinnia is colouring her hair, you can see that there's no hair dye in the bottle.

Just after Miss Trunchbull suspects there is someone in her house, she comes over to the foyer area and looks up. At this point, Matilda and Miss Honey are looking through the banister and we can clearly see that Miss Trunchbull is looking directly at them. So they really would have been caught.

Before the spoon goes in Matilda's mouth, a rod is seen sticking out one end, clearly holding it up. (full frame only)

When the Wormwoods are eating dinner and watching TV, Harry asks Michael to turn the light out. Michael is seen reaching for the light twice.

The sign to the side of the chalkboard states "Student's rules". As there are more than 1 student in the class, it should read "Students' rules". Ironic in a classroom of young children learning about spelling and grammar.

Matilda's parents allow her to stay with Miss Honey but they never considered the fact that the FBI would recognize Matilda and ask her where her parents went.

In the scene where the FBI agents are searching the garage, Matilda removes the tape from the camera. If you look, you will see the cassette door is open and then Matilda uses her powers to open the door and remove the VHS cassette.

It is stated that Miss Trunchbull competed in the Olympics in shot put, javelin, and hammer throw. According to her jersey those were the 1972 Olympics. The hammer throw wasn't added as an Olympic event for women until the year 2000 - four years after this movie was released.

Miss Honey teaches her first grade class multiplication. Students do not learn multiplication until at least third grade.

When the newborn Matilda Wormwood is being brought home from the hospital, a 1991 Ford Escort is seen when her father Harry Wormwood takes the U-turn in the parking lot of the hospital. Matilda is 6 1/2 years old in the present-day setting set about the same year as this movie's release date and has her birthday in August, and didn't go to school until the start of second semester. The 1991-96 generation Ford Escort didn't enter production until early 1990 and Matilda would have been born in 1989 if she's 6 1/2 years old with her birthday is in August.

Matilda reads classic novels at the age of six. Many classic novels contain profanity and racial slurs, which Matilda is too young to be exposed to.

When the black cat is stalking Miss Trunchbull we hear a meowing sound, but the cat isn't opening its mouth.

In the assembly hall when Bruce Bogtrotter is walking up to the front of the room Lavender turns to Matilda to say "He lives on my block," Matilda says something in return but there is no sound.

When Matilda grabs the floating tape from the cops' open recorder, the sound of her hand touching the tape and the action of her actually grasping it do not match.

When Amanda is thrown over the fence, she slides along the ground then stands up and shakes herself but the sound comes seconds later.

After Matilda levitates Lavender, the wires are visible as she descends (pan and scan version).

When Trunchbull is getting attacked by Matilda's powers (as Magnus' ghost), at the moment that the kids are throwing food, and coming out of the classroom, an angle shows the broken door of the classroom, and behind it, only a blue screen where the window should be.

When Miss Trunchbull gets frightened by a black cat as she steps back near the front steps of her mansion, a reflection of one of the camera crew can be seen reflected on the side of her car as the camera zooms forward.

The movie is clearly supposed to be set in New Jersey, considering every car has a blue license plate with six golden digits and a separator in between, and Matilda's parents (especially her mother Zinnia) have thick Jersey accents. However, there are palm trees all over Matilda's hometown. New Jersey is in the temperate zone of the Earth, and palm trees are mostly restricted to tropical/subtropical climates (the movie was filmed in California).

The Wormwoods' house and the Trunchbull's house in real life per their filming locations are roughly 22 miles away from each other. Matilda could not have walked to and from these locations within a half hour.

This movie compared to the book is set in the United States. The main antagonist, Miss Trunchbull speaks in a British accent due to being played by British actress Pam Ferris.

When Miss Honey admits to Matilda that she's "not as brave as you", Matilda responds by saying "I thought grown-ups weren't afraid of anything." However, earlier that day, Matilda had clearly seen Miss Trunchbull freak out when the newt was in her glass of water, and also heard her mother scream when she blew up the TV earlier in the film.

Miss Trunchbull's car still has the Wormwood Motors plates, making it obvious her car is not registered. So technically, she is driving the car illegally - even after purchasing it.

Matilda and Miss Honey escape out of the Trunchbull's house through the window well. Due to the window being rather out of reach, they could not have been able to get out of there that quickly without the advantage of a ladder or rope before the Trunchbull noticed the sound of the window banging.

When Miss Honey pays for a visit at the Wormwoods', she mentions about Harry Wormwood selling a faulty car; but Matilda never mentioned to Miss Honey from that point about her father's business in selling defective cars, and Miss Trunchbull didn't confirm her car to be a lemon until the scene of the moment she decides to lock Matilda into the Chokey; and then later on she threatens Harry Wormwood with a lawsuit over the phone about the car he sold to her that Miss Honey would never have known about earlier in the movie.

In one of Hortensia's flashbacks she brings up to Matilda and Lavender, she mentions a 2nd grader named Julius Rottwinkle being thrown out of the window by Miss Trunchbull for eating two M&M's during her lesson, and he presumably survives afterwards. Miss Trunchbull however doesn't get reprimanded or placed on administrative leave.

When Matilda loses her hair ribbon at Trunchbull's house, Trunchbull uses this and the fact that Matilda is not wearing a ribbon the next day to imply Matilda was the one in her house. Throughout the film Matilda wears hair ribbons in other colours, so it is strange that she would go without instead of wearing one of those.

It's totally out of character for Harry to take Matilda with him to his workplace, given that it was already established earlier that he and Zinnia always preferred to leave her at home on her own.

Miss Honey says that Matilda "can multiply large sums in her head." However, sums are the result of addition, not multiplication, so it would be more appropriate to say that she can multiply large products in her head.

The narrator refers to the librarian as "Mrs. Phelps" - just like in the original novel; but the ending credits refers to her as "Miss Phelps".

At the start of the movie, Mrs. Wormwood is shown walking out of the hospital. In real life, women who have just given birth are pushed to their cars in wheelchairs. On the other hand, postpartum recovery can take up to six weeks after giving birth.